


i don’t mean to stare

by scenedenial



Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: Angst, Caretaking, Heat Cycles, M/M, Masturbating, Mpreg, Sexual Content, Shame, blame roger eggers, i know i’m so sorry, i watched the lighthouse and can’t stop thinking about merpussy, mermaid au??, some body horror, weirdo sea creature anatomy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scenedenial/pseuds/scenedenial
Summary: The sea is a cruel mistress, Noel quotes, smirking with his rows of teeth visible and glistening, because Noel is well read and the gold skin of his taut little torso flows into the gray-brown tail of a bull shark while Cody is stuck in the cliche fucking body of a merman.
Relationships: Cody Ko/Noel Miller, light Cody Ko/Kelsey Kreppel
Comments: 31
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is horny and weird so don’t read if you aren’t into horny weirdness
> 
> Also as usual this is FICTION and doesn’t represent Cody and Noel as people so don’t show it to them thank you
> 
> Title is from Nirvana’s breed cause. U know

Cody has been underwater for so long that he can’t remember what sunlight looks like when it isn’t rippled and split up by the incessant roll of the waves crashing on the surface. For so long that the gills at the base of his ribs no longer ache with _wrongness_ when he breathes in. 

He still wakes up spitting and thrashing and drowning. 

Wishes he _could_ drown, most days, wishes for anything that would stop the bitter blue cold that presses in on all sides until he could claw his way out of his skin just to be free of it.

That’s not how this _works_.

 _The sea is a cruel mistress_ , Noel quotes, smirking with his rows of teeth visible and glistening, because Noel is well read and the gold skin of his taut little torso flows into the gray-brown tail of a bull shark while Cody is stuck in the cliche fucking body of a merman. Mer- _thing._

Cody stopped feeling like a _man_ the day that the ocean dragged him down here to die, or _not_ , as the case may be.

Cody is always so fucking cold down here. And Noel can’t stop moving or he’ll die. 

So they swim. 

Cody watches Noel bite the head off a fish and spit out the thin bones, totally stripped of meat. It took Cody ages to get used to tearing into live prey; now he doesn’t bat an eye at it. He swallows the bloody chunk of tuna that Noel hands him. Their fingers brush and Cody feels it in his stomach.

The thin fingers of sunlight that make their way down here glint off the scales that line Cody’s tail.

“Ugh,” Noel turns to face Cody, swims backwards which Cody always though sharks couldn’t do but maybe it’s different when they have the arms and chest and face of an instagram model despite marinating in saltwater off the coast of California for eighteen months, “can I?” 

Cody obliges. Obviously. 

Noel’s mouth tastes like iron and fresh meat. He could sever Cody’s tongue with one wrong move. Cody doesn’t mind it. 

Seaweed brushes against Cody’s arms and back; he’s letting Noel propel them forwards and down, feels the sand like an ice-cold carpet under his tail fin eventually.

 _Stay._ Cody wants to say. _Let’s find a cave where we can hide. Let’s never leave._

If Noel could hear his thoughts he would have to give Cody that apologetic smile and say _I can’t._

—

Cody has learned that it helps not to think about it to hard. Not to ask yourself questions you can’t answer. 

Sometimes he tracks down a dark haired mermaid with electric-blue scales who was named Kelsey before she died in a windsurfing accident. She is pale and beautiful and has been down here twice as long as Cody and knows how to listen to the voices that he can’t make out.

She’s the one who squeezed his hands and listened to his screams as his legs (and Cody, human Cody, had nice legs, _okay_ , he was a runner and, fuck) blackened and withered and morphed into a slick, scaled tail with sickening, agonizing slowness. 

“You’ll get used to it faster than you’d think.” She’d said, her voice a high, musical lilt, the first pretty thing that Cody had heard in this dank, salty graveyard of violence and decay. “It stops hurting after a while.”

She was right, right and wrong. 

Cody is used to it, sure, but it still aches like hell.

—

When he isn’t with Noel, Cody doesn’t bother swimming. Would rather just hang limp in the depths and close his eyes and shut his brain off until he gets hungry enough to shoot an arm out and catch something that can’t wriggle away in time.

The sea is too fucking packed. Can’t get no goddamn peace.

Cody finds a rocky outcropping off the coast that seems well enough deserted, save for the small fish and the coral and the weird, gelatinous things that stick themselves to the ocean floor. Maybe he should’ve taken that fucking marine biology class in college. 

There’s an opening of sorts, just large enough for him to fit his body into if he curls his tail up, and he stays there. Something comforting about the lack of space, the press of rock around him that makes him feel more real than the open water ever could.

Cody sleeps.

—

The first time it happens, Cody is positive that he’s dying. 

He finds Kelsey, using his arms to press off the rocks because he can barely swim with how overheated and flushed and weak he feels, like he’s been turned inside out. The scales of his tails are slick with a viscous substance that’s tangible even through the seawater and are so _raw_ to the touch that Cody can barely stand it. 

Kelsey blushes, covers her pretty mouth when she realizes. 

She explains to Cody, her voice low enough that nothing around them will catch it, and he flees, the heat pouring off of him in waves. A mixture of shame and something else, something primal. 

_Fuck._ Jesus fucking fuck. 

It’s awful. Worse when Cody realizes what he needs to do to alleviate it. 

The first time, Cody doesn’t touch himself until the heat inside of him rises to the point where he’s sure he’s sustaining brain damage, until he can’t stop the tears and the groans that are wrenched out of him, until the pain and restlessness and throbbing, relentless _need_ becomes something so unbearable that black blood begins working its way from his nose, from the place where his scales soften and spread and—

And get wet. 

Cody presses himself as far back into the shallow cave as he can manage, can feel the rock cutting into his back and arms. He’s crying, hot saltwater dissolving off of his face into the cold saltwater that surrounds his fevered body.

Too much. It’s too fucking much.

Noel’s voice plays in his head— _cruel mistress_. Cody’s hands flail out in front of him, trying to strangle the water in his grip, trying to punch through it until it apologizes for what it’s made him, for what he is now.

 _Please._ Cody begs. The opening at the top of his tail aches so hard that he could pass out. _Please, please make this stop._ The waves roil around him, inside him. 

When he finally gives up and forces two fingers inside, sobs wracking his body, the head-ringing, bone-deep relief is such that he thinks he’ll vomit.

He works his slit—his _cunt_ , a voice in the back of his head tells him before he shakes it off—and it feels like what he imagines it must feel like to do heroin. 

Cody never shot up in his other life. Maybe he would’ve, if he’d known this is where he’d end up. Maybe he would’ve done a lot of things. 

His head knocks back against the rocks and he’s too gone to care about the filmy blood that dilutes itself into the water or the sting at the base of his scalp. The pleasure makes him queasy, the way it throws him back to touching ex-girlfriends and one night stands only it’s _him_ , his body, his—

Pussy. 

Cody’s mouth is full of salt, his belly full of seawater. He shoves the fingers deeper, deeper (not deep enough). Needs _more_ , so bad that he’s writhing for it. The heat sloughing off his skin makes the small fish dart away from him, startled by the sudden change in the water. Good. Stay away. 

Cody’s strange, sharp teeth are tearing at the skin inside his cheeks. Snot gathers beneath his nose and he gags on it, gags on the horrible fucking ocean. 

His other hand goes to the top of the place where his scales change to pink-purple flesh, to slick wetness, and, oh _okay_. 

There’s a hard, swollen sort of nub there, above the place where Cody’s fingers are buried and when Cody recognizes it as a _clit_ he almost can’t do it. Wouldn’t if touching it didn’t send tremors through his body that make him feel _alive_ for the first moment in all the time he’s been down here.

“Jesus.” Cody whispers, to nobody, to himself, to the sea that foams around him. 

Cody works two fingers around the nub and thinks about sex before death, thinks about the girls that would ride him and leave before morning, thinks about the soft curve of Kelsey’s breasts and the pink uptick of her nipples, thinks about Noel’s salty mouth and rows of teeth and—

Oh. _Oh._

There’s a deep, terrible tug in the base of his torso, like something coming loose and Cody is gasping and cursing and then—what the _fuck_ —a shockingly human-looking cock slips free and drops down into his hand. 

Oh, Jesus.

After that it’s over before it starts. Cody squeezes his new, hard cock with his left hand and wriggles the fingers inside of him with his right and, _boom_ , he’s coming and the channel inside of him is locking up around his fingers and his vision is blurring into white. 

When he comes back to himself he realizes that familiar white spunk is clouding the water around him and that the same vicious clear substance that covered his scales his dripping from the... _opening_ and running down his tail. He swipes a finger through it, brings it to his mouth in some sort of clouded, perverse curiosity. All he can taste is salt. 

His skin has cooled. The little fish come back in droves, dart in and nibble at his semen. He snatches them up and breaks their spines in his teeth, suddenly hungrier than he’s ever been before. He feels weightless and wrong and satiated and disgusting. 

Cody sleeps. Doesn’t dream.

—

Kelsey checks on him, brings him chunks of tender, fatty meat that Cody doesn’t ask about. He stays in the cave for close to a week, he thinks, too tired to swim, too needy to sleep. 

She helps him, once, shows him where to press his fingers down inside the spongey canal to make the pleasure explode like an H-bomb in his gut, kisses his collarbone as he comes over her hands and lean, white stomach. 

_What if it never goes back to normal?_ Cody wonders, idly. _What if I never stop looking like_ this _?_

“It’ll be over soon.” Kelsey says, stroking his torso with her gentle, blue fingers. Cody shakes and sweats and ruts his hips against the sand until his stomach is rubbed red. 

Creatures swim up to gawk at him—octopi and jellyfish and the occasional siren. He bares his teeth at them, hisses, throws rocks. Tries to hide the swell of his opening in the sand. Covers his face and screams until they leave him be.

Noel comes by in the dark of the evening, calling his name. Cody hides, wills himself invisible, embarrassed by the full-body flush he can’t get rid of, by the slick leaking into the water around him, by the _fucking pussy._

He knows Noel can smell it, can smell _him_ , but he’s gracious enough to swim away anyways. Cody watches him with unnatural deep-sea vision until he can’t make out his shape in the black water. 

—

When it’s finally, finally over, Cody could cry from the sheer relief of it. It’s the first time he’s felt _lightweight_ down here under all these tons of seawater, when he comes awake and doesn’t immediately feel the deep, swollen ache in his cunt. When his hand goes to his tail there is nothing but smooth, reformed scales covering the place where his cock and hole used to drip in tandem. 

_Fuck,_ Cody yells out into the churning sea, for once a scream of thanks. 

He bites the head off a snapper and swallows it down whole.

He needs to find Noel.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very explicit but also pretty much this entire fic is very explicit so

There’s a storm brewing; Cody has learned to pick out the first signs of it, the way the sand at the ocean floor stirs, the way the small creatures disappear into the rocks and coral. 

“It’s a good thing, man.” Noel says, rubbing his palms together with this toothy grin on his face. He loves the churn of the ocean. Loves that he can breach the surface without being seen when the beach empties. 

Storms make Cody anxious. He picks the spines from a sea urchin, busying his hands and eyes with the task to keep himself from reaching out to Noel and dissolving in his arms. Cody swallows the urchin. The poison doesn’t affect him now. Fuck, he’s starving. 

“Listen,” Noel turns to him, backpedaling with his fins, and from just the timbre of his voice Cody can tell he’s about to say something humiliating, “are you okay?” 

Yeah. Humiliating. 

“Fine.” Cody says, not meeting Noel’s eyes.

“Kelsey said—” Noel starts. Cody drops his head into his palms. 

“You talked to her?”

“I was worried about you, man.” Noel’s face is plaintive and open and genuine. Cody could sock it in. 

“What did she _tell_ you?” 

“No details.” Noel’s skin seems to catch all the daylight in this fucking wasteland, somehow. “I promise. Just that you were... you know. In heat.”

“Jesus.” Cody turns, crushes a handful of barnacles on the rock face next to them so he doesn’t have to look at Noel with his burning red face. “Don’t say it like that.” 

“You don’t have to be embarrassed.” Noel says it all soft. Jesus. 

“Easy for you to say.” 

“It’s natural.” _God._

“Yeah?” Cody’s angry now, for no good reason. He doesn’t remember if he was a bad person on land or if this is a recent development. “ _Natural_ to have to crank off with my fingers in my fucking _pussy_ twenty times a day so I don’t go insane?”

Fuck. Too far. Way too fucking far. Cody needs to get out of here.

“Your _what_?” Noel’s voice has changed into something low and husky. His eyes are dark. He looks like the predator he is. 

“Shut up, asshole.” Cody turns and swims, fast as his tail can take him, shoving his way through schools of fish and past outcroppings of rock with his eyes blearing. 

“ _Cody._ Stop. I’m not making fun of you.” Noel is chasing him, the whir of his fins through the water perceptible to Cody’s animal-sharp ears, and there is no way Cody wins this race. He stops, abruptly, can’t help the short scream of frustration that works its way out of his throat. 

Noel catches Cody in his arms. 

“Shh,” Noel murmurs as Cody thrashes against his grip, “it’s okay.” 

“No.” Cody half-yells it, writhes and thrashes in Noel’s grip. He needs to get away. He needs to hide. Noel can’t _know_ , can’t see how fucked up Cody is. He can’t. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, man.” Noel’s chin comes down on the top of Cody’s head; his arms are warm and strong and Cody goes limp in them. “I promise.”

Cody cries.

—  
The storm rages on through the black night and Cody sleeps with his arms around Noel’s neck, drifting in and out of half-realized consciousness to Noel taking them down, down, down into the icy, hidden depths. 

The water is freezing but Noel’s back is so warm. 

Cody doesn’t know how far they swim. Doesn’t know what time of day or night it is when he finally wakes fully, cradled into Noel’s chest with a siren’s song filling his ears. 

The creatures down here are strange and large and luminescent and Cody wonders if this is where Noel comes to be unknown. If this is his cave. 

“Shh.” Noel murmurs in Cody’s ear. His eyes are glowing with their own light source, lit up from within. “It’s okay.” 

“Where are we?” Cody speaks in a whisper—anything more doesn’t feel right in this strange, ghostly place. 

“Somewhere safe.” 

Cody presses his face into Noel’s neck, startled and halfway frightened by an enormous, eyeless shark that slides past them and disappears into the murk. 

“I can bring you down here next time you’re—you know. You’ll have privacy. And it’ll help to be where it’s cold.” 

“Thank you.” Cody murmurs, the shame that flows through him overwhelmed by the sweet, cutting ache of being understood. 

Noel holds Cody tight to his front like a child as they ascend and Cody can’t mind it. 

It’s morning.

—

Cody doesn’t take Noel up on his offer during the next cycle. He wants to, _fuck_ , he wants to, but he can’t. Can’t imagine laying in a twisted heap of limbs and heat and slick and spunk, jittering and sweating and cursing and _coming_ , with Noel watching over him like that. He feels hot, humiliated tears press at the back of his eyes at just the thought of it. At the thought of Noel’s tongue cleaning him up. Of Noel’s _cock_ —

Stop it. Get a grip.

It’s better and worse the second time. 

Better because he knows what to do, because the feeling of his cunt tightening around his fingers or of his dick slipping out of its place inside of him are known variables. Because he learns that he can fit almost a whole hand into the hole with enough sweating and shoving and patience and when he comes on _that_ he nearly blacks out from the rush of it. 

Worse because he needs more. Because he knows this won’t hold him. Because every fucking time he orgasms, it’s Noel’s name that he has to bite back with his needle-sharp teeth. 

Fuck. _Fuck._

—

Cody avoids Noel for another month. Deals with it on his own. He’s getting skinny, all his energy used up in fighting this battle with his own body for days at a time. Kelsey looks worried. Cody wonders what she says to Noel, to the other sirens, about him.

The fourth time it happens, though, the need is so pressing and urgent and overwhelming that Cody gives up. 

Once he manages to track Noel down it’s already too late. He’s already slick with sweat and whatever that liquid that builds in his pussy is and the little creatures stare at him as he struggles against the waves, raw and exposed and more vulnerable than he has ever felt in his life.

He collapses against Noel when they finally come together, and he doesn’t wait for Cody to say a word. Just dives, pulling Cody away from the million pairs of watchful eyes. 

Cody is so grateful he could sob. 

Instead he clings to Noel’s shoulders and squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look into Noel’s face and see all of his own shame and guilt and _want_ reflected there. 

Down, down, down.

The cold of the deep soothes Cody’s skin, quiets the burning in his cunt. Noel murmurs in his ear in the language of the sea.

—

Noel swims through a tightening passage of rock until he reaches a place where it opens into a dark cavern with stalactites jutting out through the water. Cody was claustrophobic in his human life but down here, small, tight spaces feel correct. He clings to Noel, hopes he can sense the _thank you_ without Cody having to say it.

“No one’ll bother you here.” Noel says, laying Cody down in a bed of seaweed and kelp. It’s comfortable enough that, for a moment, Cody isn’t paying attention to the way the pressure is building in his pussy, around his still-hidden cock, exacerbated by Noel’s scent that clings to his skin from the journey down. 

“I—” Cody groans, frantic, and Noel seems to understand. 

“I’ll be right outside, okay? You can... take care of things.” It could be the low light or Cody’s heat-fueled imagination, but he thinks he sees Noel’s cheeks color. 

Fuck. 

Cody is so fucking desperate.

“Wait.” He gasps. 

Noel turns back. He is so fucking beautiful. Cody wants to bask in the glow of his white-gray eyes forever.

“Please?” 

—

Cody is on his back in the tangle of greenery, his heartbeat thrumming through every piece of his body. He knows Noel can hear and smell it, the rush of blood in his veins. He imagines Noel ripping through his flesh with those rows of teeth, imagines the cloud of gore in the water. Imagines sinking under (finally, finally) while Noel’s bloody smile fades out above him.

Fuck, he’s sick. 

Noel’s lips press into Cody’s and whatever prey he swallowed last is now just a trace on his tongue. 

“Fuck me.” Cody says, and he’s never said those words in that order to anybody before but it feels so fucking _right_. His whole body is electrified and turned-out and so _filled_ with need.

“I’m gonna take care of you.” Noel murmurs, his hands feeling huge and hot and _intense_ as they press into Cody’s chest. “Don’t worry.” 

So Cody doesn’t.

He doesn’t worry when Noel touches his _pussy_ , when he runs a finger over the length of it with an expression like he’s transfixed or maybe stunned. He doesn’t worry when he puts his own fingers around Noel’s wrists and guides his hand until Cody’s cock slips out into the dark water between them. 

He doesn’t worry when Noel looks down and says _oh_ with so much affection in his voice that Cody feels the press of tears in his skull once again. 

Really, _really_ doesn’t worry when Noel wraps a lean, long-fingered hand around the base of Cody’s cock and tugs.

“You’re so perfect, man.” Noel murmurs. Cody covers his face with his hands, let his hips stutter up to meet Noel’s touch. 

“Need more.” Cody mumbles, doesn’t want to _beg_ but is getting dangerously close. “Fuck, I—” 

“Shh, I know.” Noel rubs a hand over Cody’s hip, right where his human (?) skin melts into the rippling scales. “Here, c’mere.” 

It’s Noel’s turn to guide Cody’s hand, pressing the flats of his fingers to the space between the two small, smooth fins that flank the underside of his shark tail. Cody rubs, experimentally. Adds pressure bit by bit. Noel’s mouth is open and his face is a shade of pink-red-gold that Cody has never seen it. Fucking _beautiful_. 

“Ugh—” Noel groans, like it’s being torn out of his chest, and, _oh, shit._

Okay.

There’s two.

Cody should’ve taken that fucking science credit.

Cody’s cunt pulses unconsciously, empty and desperate and waiting. Noel’s eyes go dark and hungry as he watches. The cocks are long and pale and smooth and not quite of-this-earth and they’re going to tear Cody apart inside and he _wants_ it. 

Cody gets his hands on them and they’re thick enough that his fingers barely wrap around the base. Jesus Christ. Noel makes this noise when Cody runs a palm down the length and it’s something keening and needy and Cody’s whole body aches with it.

He nods.

Sees white when Noel pushes the cocks in.

Thrashes in his bed of seaweed, feels tears and drool streaming from his face, feels Noel’s skin break as he drives sharp fingernails into his shoulders. Feels his cunt _reject reject reject_ and finally, blissfully, take the intrusions in to the base.

Holy shit. Holy _fucking_ shit. 

He’s too full. The walls of his pussy are stretched around Noel, gore-red and shocking next to the pale, filmy gray of the cocks, and Cody is positive that he’s going to rupture any second now. Blood hazes in the water. 

Noel kisses Cody’s neck, his jaw, his shoulders. Whispers _you’re doing so good, man_. Cody cries. His cock doesn’t soften.

When Noel starts moving, starts hitting on that place inside Cody that Kelsey found with her fingers, it’s all he can do to stay conscious. The pleasurepaindesperation wraps itself around his spinal cord, dissolved every nerve ending in his body until the only thing Cody can feel is the push and pull of Noel’s cocks inside of him.

Inside his _virgin pussy_. 

Everything he ever wanted.

Cody comes and it takes him by surprise through the haze, his cock spurting untouched. His back arches and he shakes and yells and comes comes _comes_ and it lasts so long that by the time he’s spent his whole body tingles with static in the way hands do when they fall asleep. 

“Fu—” Cody gasps, throat too thick to speak. “I—”

And Noel is coming inside of him with a full-body shudder and Cody cries out and throws his head back and feels his nails tear strips of flesh off of Noel’s back. 

It doesn’t stop. Cody can feel himself being pumped full like an overused toy and, yeah, fine, that gets him; his cock twitches against his stomach. 

_”Jesus fuck.”_ Noel moans and when he pulls out there’s a flood of spunk that pours from Cody’s hole and an emptied out hollowness inside him that he feels will never be filled again. 

“Oh my god.” Cody says, and his voice breaks off into a whine. He hides his face in the crook of his elbow. Noel nuzzles warm into his neck.

“Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. Fucking—yeah.” 

Cody’s cunt leaks with Noel’s leftover cum for days.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey gang sorry for the super long wait I had finals and family trouble and shit hasn’t been good but I’m tryna get back into this!! This chapter is short and transitory but I’m picking up steam for the next couple xo love you
> 
> TW: death/gore, mention of suicide

They stay hidden together in the cavern even after Cody’s heat ends. They keep using each other even if he doesn’t _need_ it because it _feels_ good. He learns that he can expose his pussy at will by rubbing the scales overtop it in the right way. Noel swallows his cum and catches things for them to eat and swims back and forth with Cody sleeping in his arms.

Cody thinks Noel doesn’t need to sleep. Or that maybe he sleeps with his eyes open. He doesn’t ask.

Cody wakes up one night (he thinks it’s night) to Noel masturbating, jerking one cock in each gorgeous hand, sighing _fuck, Cody_ when he comes in a filmy white cloud that dissolves into the sea. Cody lays still, face burning. Falls back to sleep with his hips canting against the ocean floor, the friction making his cunt drip. 

Noel treats him like a girlfriend or like something delicate, rubbing his shoulders and feeding him the best pieces of prey, mouth-to-mouth, and licking soft over his pussy like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing. 

Cody could get used to it. He shouldn’t, but he could. 

—

Cody visits Kelsey at the warm blue shoreline where the sirens hang out with their hair somehow never tangling as it floats around their thin shoulders. Her face lights up when she sees him. She fusses over him, her eyes bright blue and see-through and lovely as she runs her delicate hands through his hair. She holds his hand while they talk to the others.

Cody thinks of Noel. Feels guilty. Pressure on his chest, just below his sternum.

—

The weeks pass in the watery depths, slipping past each other like the churn of waves against rocks. Salt crystallizes on Cody’s skin.

Cody eats and sleeps and swims and fucks Noel.

He’s gaining back the weight that he lost from the steady diet of snapper and jellyfish and dolphin and _cock_ that Noel has him on. His stomach and arms are softening and filling in and he can’t help the twinge in his gut when Noel runs his fingers over them. 

“You’re so fucking pretty, man,” Noel pants as he fucks into Cody’s hole, “fuck.” 

Cody covers his face with his palms.

—

Sometimes Noel hits him. Mostly he kisses him. 

Noel’s mouth tastes like fish and blood and heat. After he’s done, it tastes like Cody.

—

Cody ended up here by being fucking stupid. Memorial Day weekend. Shots all morning. Vision blurring out around the edges. 

The hull of a speedboat that wasn’t his screeching like a dying animal as it broke apart against the shore. That noise and choking on the blood in his throat the last memories he has before waking up dead in the water. 

Memorial Day weekend. He had just been promoted. His sister was having a baby. 

One thing Cody has learned down here is that everything is a fluke and none of it can be undone.

—

(Noel jumped. Cody’s never asked, but he knows.)

—

“You seem different,” Noel says one morning after a storm while the sea still froths angry. 

“Different how?” Cody’s mouth is stained with his breakfast.

“I dunno.” When Noel furrows his brow Cody can imagine how he looked in life. “Just. Different.”

“In a bad way?”

“No.” Noel presses his mouth to Cody’s shoulder and Cody can feel the lightest brush of fangs. “Not bad. Like, softer?”

“Oh.” Cody would hate that coming from anyone else, but. It’s Noel. Fuck.

“Don’t be weird, man.” Noel smiles, sheepish, with a mouthful of canines. “I just like you.”

—

Cody wakes up weeks later feeling sicker than he has ever known, sicker than he did on the day of that first heat, sicker than the morning after the one and only time he did meth with Sam at some shady underground sex club. 

Cody’s vomit clouds in the water and the sight of it dispersing makes his stomach roll over hard again. Noel’s hands are cool and merciful on his back and neck. 

Noel makes a joke about Cody not being able to hold his liquor but he’s worried, Cody can see it; this has never happened to either of them down here.

“It’s fine,” Cody says, because it is, and because he hates how vulnerable he feels when Noel gives him that look. “I’m fine.”

—

It happens again. Cody feels sore and tired every moment he’s awake, restless and haunted every moment that he isn’t. He can’t keep the prey that Noel drags back into the cavern down. His head pounds. 

“I think I’m dying,” Cody mumbles into the sea. Noel laughs, sharp, and shakes his head. His inhuman fingers tighten on Cody’s flesh.

“Shut up.” 

Noel brings the sirens. He once told Cody, laughing, that they were the worst part about living down here, and not only because they wouldn’t fuck him. Seeing him hover next to Kelsey makes Cody’s chest twinge. 

Kelsey and another siren with long black and gold hair listen to Cody’s heart. Feel his skin for a temperature. Prod at his scales. Cody closes his eyes and imagines they’re Noel’s hands instead. Slim fingers press down against Cody’s stomach and he fights to writhe away from the pressure. 

“Cody,” Kelsey murmurs. She looks worried and beautiful. Cody imagines her on his face while Noel fucks him open. “Have you been in heat this month?”


End file.
